A defiant homeowner is refusing to trim his 65-foot conifer trees that have been blocking sunlight from neighbours' garden for years despite a legal order. 

 

John Rose, 61, was sent a letter last week warning him that he must cut down the Leylandii conifer bushes as they 'adversely affect the enjoyment' of adjoining houses. 

 

The huge trees have been a permanent fixture at the detached property, worth an estimated £500,000, for decades. 

Council papers show neighbours Richard and Sheila Cory originally wrote a letter of complaint about the trees in 2013, saying they 'block sunlight' from their garden.

 

Now, North East Derbyshire District Council say the trees must be pruned within six months, and that failure to do so will result in prosecution or a fine. 

 

Planning officers say the two conifer bushes must be trimmed to no more than 6.8 feet and 17.4 feet - and maintained at no more than 10.1 feet and 20.6 feet.

 

But Mr Rose, an IT consultant, claims his house has suffered water damage and said cutting the trees down would make the problem worse. 

 

'They're around 20 metres high, but to cut them down to two or three metres, you might as well cut them out all together as they'll just die and will need cutting out.

 

'The reason they're so big and healthy is because they're soaking up water.

 

'We don't know where the water is coming from, but it's causing damage and that will get worse if the trees are cut down.

 

'The irony is one of the trees is soaking up water and [stops it] going into their garden. Cutting it down would turn their garden into a bog.'

 

In the letter in 2013, Mr Rose's neighbours wrote: 'For much of the year they cast a full shadow across our garden and in the winter months they block the light of the sun when it is low in the sky from our kitchen.

 

'It disturbs me to think that maybe you are resisting the idea of cutting them down - I think you simply need to be a good neighbour and completely fell all of them.'

 

In April this year, after asking North East Derbyshire District Council to step in, Mr Corey, 67, a retired mining geologist, said: 'They [the trees] dominate everything. They're higher than the house now, about 20-25 metres high. It's ridiculous - we would like them removed.'

 

'It blocks our light,' his wife Sheila, a retired district nurse, 67, said.  

 

But Mr Rose, who took the house on from his parents in 2002, claimed: 'I'm suffering more than anyone else, because my garden is totally in shade, but I can't cut them down.

 

'This has been going for about 10 years and causing so much stress.

 

'I have been trying to get hold of the council officer who wrote the letter but he isn't at work and nobody else will talk to me.

 

'I feel like they're trying to avoid a discussion so don't want to talk to me.

 

'I've been dealing with so many authorities and I feel like I'm banging my head against the wall.'